Aug 21, 2012

Making sense.

Picture credit: http://www.moillusions.com

The angel and the devil were back to what they do best.
"You do not make sense," one complained to the other.
"Why do you think so?" asked the other.
"Because at times you are absolutely foolish, your actions absurd and your thoughts eccentric."
"And, why do you think so?"
"Because that is what you are. Absolutely senseless."
"Yet, why do you think so?"
"Because that is how you appear to me."
"Or is it because you think so?"

Aug 14, 2012

The enigma called 'women'

Picture credit: broadrecognition.com

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
                         - Maya Angelou 
                         ('Phenomenal Women')

            Oh women*, the greatest enigma ever to have existed, will we men ever be able to understand a billionth of you? Or will it always be that you are from Venus and we from Mars!? What creatures are you? What is it that fills your heart? How many emotions, how many feelings have you buried in there? Each dimple and each wrinkle on your face, do they hide beneath them epic stories in grace? Has ever a man deciphered at least one among the million thoughts masked in every gaze and stare of yours?
         How come is nature so unfair? You women are made so calm, composed and complex all at a time while we men can't even claim the credit to be at least one at a time! Is this inherent unfairness because nature too like you all is a graceful lady who prefers to shoulder her emotional traumas all by herself? Is it that you women are not wired the way we men are? We men are poor in looking at what is invisible, understanding what is not told and reacting to what is yet to happen. To us, what is white is white and what is black is black. But to you, like those intelligent physicists who widened the horizons of our knowledge, white is made of seven colors! Oh wait, only seven? I am talking of 'women' and they are blessed with the ability of such enormous multiplicity of thoughts, that maybe even seven billion or trillion thoughts might get triggered in them by a single word of ours.
         No, I don't complain of incompatibility. After all you are nature's most prized creation! All that I intend to say is that I am simply amazed by the ability that women possess. Any supercomputer, however technically superior, shall fare poor if it had to compete with the thought processing ability of the female brain. What extraordinary parallel processing of thoughts. You are now here, now there and now everywhere. You handle this, that, even that and what not! To men a super hero is either a Superman, or a Spiderman or a Batman. But not to women, for each one of you is a combo of Superwoman, Spiderwoman and Batwoman!
       The simple presence of women in the lives of men, in whatever form- daughter, sister, friend, colleague, wife, girl friend, guide, teacher or above all mother - makes our life come alive. (I have not had the privilege of the company of women in all these forms, but only a few. And a friend of mine remarks that is precisely the reason I am more appreciative of them.) You have the best shoulders to cry on; you are the best shock absorbers in times of crisis; you have that magical 1000 Watt smile that lights us up on any gloomy day and that genuine gentleness coupled with child like innocence which eases the process of living and makes life simply beautiful!
         But why is it that most of the times, you mean different from what you say? Given the foolishness of men like us, how come do you expect us to read between the lines? If it was Shakespeare, Voltaire or Dostoevsky we could have managed for they were all men, but you are women. Those high energy thesis of the Higgs Boson experiment seem understandable because they are told the way they are. Oh, how I wish there was a compiler which decoded your words into your thoughts. If technology ever manages to come up with such a decoder, that will be its greatest contribution in easing the life of men! You share events and expect us to react to your emotions which arose as a consequence to those events. Who on earth gave you the false impression that men are damn smart? I doubt if God himself is so smart!
         When it hurts, do let us know it hurts. When you are happy, please reveal it to us. We are dumb enough to pick up the wrong vibes, insensitive enough to fail noticing changes (which always turn out to be significant to you, when we fail to gauge its - forget the significance - presence itself) So, you tell us and we shall know it. Not that we shall always be the same dumb fools, but you help us increase our sensitivity. And one fine day, maybe we too will reach that peak of minimum maturity where reading between your lines becomes a possibility. If possible, please be a bit more insensitive. When we men say a thing, we usually mean only what we say. Please do not derive interpretations which never actually existed.
       But maybe it is all easy said than done. Is it? And we men may find it too hard to understand why it is so tough for you to put your thoughts into words. Well, if this is the way it is, then let it be so. Sometimes a status quo is the only thing which is the way to progress, because that is the only way of survival. We expect when things seem to be in our sway and accept when we realize we are in the sway of things. What better can we mortals do? The battle of the sexes has no end, for its end only signifies the arrival of the doomsday.
     Yet, we owe to you much much than you ever owe to us. What if Shakespeare said, 'Fraility, thy name is woman!' The universe itself is frail, isn't it? I have sincerely come to believe that the best in the business deserve every word of exaggeration in appreciation. And as I see it, certain women are more than the best when it comes to living a complete life! So, the appreciation of women in case is exaggerated, is still justified! I step away and would prefer to take a bow to you, the unbelievable species, with whom we men coexist. Not just coexist, but on whom we depend much more than you do on us. Women, without you, life would not be what it is. Nay, wrong again. Women, without you, how on earth would life be!

* Obviously not all women are alike, especially not the way described in this post. A lot of women might themselves disagree with this. But there are adorable women made of this stuff of legends, living epic lives. And they are the enigma that elude me!

Jun 30, 2012

Freedom of thoughts.


I crave for the freedom of thoughts.
The freedom to not succumb to an ideology in vogue, 
but to understand its essence.
The freedom to not take sides of a well crafted argument,
but to appreciate its intricacies.
The freedom to not applaud the words of the powerful, 
but to assimilate the power of words.
The freedom to not borrow agreed perceptions of the best, 
but to explore and frame opinions. 
The freedom to not defend all criticism that is hurled, 
but to accept and introspect.
The freedom to not disrupt and wobble, 
but to dissent and rebel.
I crave for the freedom of thoughts.

Jun 23, 2012

You or I?


           The angel was looking into the future, when the devil arrived.
"Don't look much beyond the horizon" the devil told the angel.
"Why so?" the angel asked.
"Because you can't see anything."
"But at the school where we are trained to be angels, we were always taught to look into the future as the meaning of our actions is seldom in the past."
"And the purpose of our actions is seldom in the future."
"Was it taught to you in your training to be a devil?"
"Nay, all of us are trained in the same school. You believe and adhere to what is taught and we don't."
"But I too sometimes doubt and deny what is taught. And I have observed that you adhere to some of those principles, which my intuition denies."
"Maybe then in those moments, you are the devil and I, the angel!!"

Jun 21, 2012

Random reflections on being right.

 
Oh seasons, oh castles,
What soul is without flaws?
      - Arthur Rimbaud

    We all are born into this world with our share of flaws. None of us is flawless. Sometimes it is these flaws in us which make us what we are, teach us the lessons we need to learn and shape our lives for the better. It is not that I claim the flaws and imperfections to be right. But I think they form a necessary part of life's package. As we overcome the flaws, we live our lives. And sometimes that act of overcoming is what turns out to be the most important part of this great drama of life!

    But as individuals, part of the society, we are very much biased towards denying the flaws that characterize us. When a good friend points out a flaw of ours to us, the most common reaction we are conditioned to express is to find ways to defend it. Our mind gets involved in exploiting options and arguments which would put us on the path of being right. But, is being flawless actually being right? Or going a step further, is being right such a huge necessity? 

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"
 - William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

    What is good and what not? What is right and what not? These are questions not to find answers but to actually find ourselves. An objective answer to these questions has eluded the best of all intellectual minds. The objectivity of right and wrong is battled on the turfs of moral and ethical philosophy for centuries. Was Thomas Scanlon right when he wrote - "Thinking about right and wrong is, at the most basic level, thinking about what could be justified to others on grounds that they, if appropriately motivated, could not reasonably reject."? But in the everyday living of ours, we all tend to behave in a way that we believe is right. So then, within each of us is an understanding of what we consider is right and what not. Given this understanding, is it that we live through life assimilating this understanding and behaving the right way or is it that we are compelled by the "need to be right" against our natural flow to live?

      Consider a girl who is engaged to a boy. They are supposed to get married in a couple of weeks, the kith and kin have been invited to grace their marriage ceremony and everything is being put in place for the 'fat' Indian wedding. Spending time with him, she realizes he is not what she supposed him to be. She gets to know that they both are of contrasting emotional wiring. She battles to let him know of their differences but the guy just can't understand what she yearns to convey. A week to the marriage, the girl gives up her attempts to make things work. Now, if she marries him owing to the pressure of the family because it is 'not the right thing to break the marriage after so much preparation', is she actually being right or is it the need to be right which coerced her into the knot?
     
"The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind." - Albert Camus

      Much of what is agreed to be right is not because we know it is right but because we agree to the social consensus of it being right. Despite the fact that social consensus is not independent of space and time, it is indeed very important. The social consensus on morality of an act is among the most vital governing authorities around which human civilizations have evolved. If not for its towering presence in our conscience, every civilization would have been reduced to anarchy! The system of law and justice is largely a codification of the social consensus on ethics and rights. But how far can the long arm of social consensus be allowed to stretch? And to what extent do we as individuals need to adhere to its judgment on right and wrong?

    Consider our own behaviour in every day life. Let us say at the place I work smoking is not considered to be the right thing and so I abstain from it there. Late in the night on a day of heavy workload, I stay back all alone at the workspace and since I am all alone, I smoke. Though I too consider it to be wrong, my desire and temptation succeed to get the better of me(as always!). But there is a raw(?) satisfaction because no one knows of the wrong I have committed. Despite having known I have wronged, I am considered by my colleagues at the workspace as being a righteous guy. Is it that I am actually right because being right is just a question of perception? Or is it that the entire notion of being socially right is flawed?

    Or that on another similar occassion I am caught smoking by one of my colleagues, who is gracious enough not to reveal it to anyone else. So whenever it is only the two of us working I start to smoke. My logic being that anyway he knows I smoke and what purpose in maintaing the image of 'being right' with him. Is this approach of mine towards the unmasking of myself right? Or is the act of committing something considered wrong irrespective of being watched, amounts to having done wrong?

“It is no longer being just and generous that makes us right; it is being successful." *

    Oh yeah, the dimension of success too is attached to the conception of being right! In the contemporary society of ours, maybe being successful is the most commonly agreed way of being right. (And this is the most paradoxical statement I could ever make!) We do not have an agreed notion of success anywhere but we agree to consider it to be a de-facto scale to call something right!

    Recently at a school near the place I live by, a mock election was conducted to introduce the concept of elections to students. A child (I call him a child because I was told he was barely 13 years old), who contested in it as a candidate demanded his father to buy certain gift items for him, which he intended to distribute among his friends who formed the electoral collage. On asking why he wanted it so badly, he said he needs to win the election and it was success alone that could assure him his 'right' place in the class! Is success an absolutely necessary pre-requisite in our struggle to be 'right'? Or is that the charm of so called success encashes on our credulity?

     I do not claim to know the answers to the questions which did arise in this unorganized, raw flow of thought. If left to roam around, these thoughts never settle down. Breaking away from their sway, I take refugee in Ghalib. Commenting on his verses and the right meaning they conveyed, he writes - "Na sataaish ki tamanna, na sile ki parvah. Gar nahi hai mere ashar me mani, na sahi." (Neither the desire for praise, nor the craving for reward. If my verses have no meaning, then so be it.) If in a world of infinitely many possibilities, my actions do not qualify to be called 'right', then so be it!

* This seemingly ironic quote is part of the larger statement “We are suffering a reign of terror because human values have been  replaced by contempt for others and the worship of efficiency, the  desire for freedom by the desire for domination. It is no longer being just and generous that makes us right; it is being successful.”, attributed to Albert Camus. But I doubt if it is a mis attribution.

Jun 16, 2012

पता नहीं



जिन गलियों में तुम जा रही हो,
उन गलियों के पता हमे नहीं।
जिन ख्वाबों में तुम आ रही हो,
उन ख्वाबों के पता तुमे नहीं।

तेरी गलियां मेरे ख़्वाबों तक लाये,
ऐसे ख्वाहिश बुनता हूँ मै रोज़ यही।
लेकिन इस दिल के गुजारिश की पता 
ज़िन्दगी के साज़िश रचने वाले को नहीं।

(Those paths on which you leave,
I know not where they lie.
These dreams into which you frequent,
You know not where they lie.

Your paths lead into my dreams,
Always do I knit hopes like these.
But the one who mystifies life 
Knows not where the wishes of this heart lie!)

May 12, 2012

ಸಂಜೆ ಬಾನು


                      

ಸಂಜೆಮಲ್ಲಿಗೆ ಅರಳೊ ಹೊತ್ತಲಿ
ಬಾನು ಮೆಲ್ಲಗೆ ಆಡಿದೆ ಹೊನ್ನಿನೋಕುಳಿ!

ಕೊಂಚ ಕೆಂಪು ತೇಲಿ
ಗಗನದ ವರ್ಣಶಾಲೆಯೊಳೂಡಿದೆ ಸಂಚು.
ಅಮ್ಮನ ಬಿಳಿ ನೀಲಿ
ಸೀರೆಗೊಲಿಸಿದಂತಿದೆ ಬಂಗಾರದ ಅಂಚು!

 ೨

ಪಡುವಣದಿ ಹೊನ್ನ ಕಿರಣ
ಮೋಡದಂಚಿಂದಿಣುಕಿ ನಗುವ ತರುಣ!

ಹಲ್ಕಿರಿದವಂಗೆ ಮನ ಸೋತು
ನಾಚಿ ನೀರಾದವಳಂತೆ ಮುಸ್ಸಂಜೆಯಲಿ ಭೂಬಾಲೆ.
ಕನ್ಯೆಯ ಒಲವ ಪಿಸುಮಾತು
ಕೇಳಿ ಕೆನ್ನೆ ಕೆಂಪೇರಿಸಿದವನಂತೆ ಮುಗಿಲಮಾಲೆ!